The newspaper industry has utilized equipment to add inserts while assembling newspapers or other publications for decades. Dating back to the 1950's, the equipment has included classic newspaper inserter hopper devices, which sit atop high speed inserting and binding machines. The inserts may be constructed of a variety of sheet materials, but commonly are paper products that may range, for example, from very thin sheets to card stock.
Inserter hopper assemblies are used, for example, to feed individual inserts to inserting machines that place one or more different inserts within a newspaper or other publication, as the newspaper or publication is being advanced through high speed publishing equipment. However, the classic inserter hopper devices disadvantageously require significant maintenance and time and effort to be setup to accommodate a given insert and/or when changing from one insert to another. For example, it is not uncommon for past designs to require up to 30 minutes to properly setup an individual inserter hopper device, and there may be several inserter hopper devices sitting above a given inserting or binding machine.
Prior inserter hopper devices also had many proprietary parts and very high power consumption. For instance, past designs incorporated heavy compression springs to operate grippers on a drum assembly to pull an individual insert from the bottom of a pile of inserts. Those designs required more than 50 pound-feet of torque to drive the moving components of the inserter hopper device, and significant power was consumed in providing the high level of torque.